You suggested using #define begi { to make C look less like
C. One place I worked for (a large defense contractor with too many imbeciles with
too much time on their hands) went one step further. We had:

#define IS_EQUAL ==#define LESS_THAN <#define LESS_EQUAL <=

and so on — perhaps to make C look more like COBOL (not that I’ve ever
touched COBOL). A simple adjustment of the header file to:

#define LESS_THAN <=#define LESS_EQUAL <

and, well, you get the picture.

Among the variable names such as 'asterisk' and 'openParen', you
miss the obvious. Behold:

int seven = 5;

When corporate coding guidelines preclude the use of single letter variables, their
phonetic equivalents do nicely:

Insults, such as boob, moron, buffoon and idiot also make nice variable names. A
former colleague had a function called ' tzyj'. Best
I could figure out, it must have been some sort of Bulgarian expletive.

Where you recommend that you eschew { } around if-else blocks unless syntactically
obligatory, you'll be glad to know that in C and
C++ it is never obligatory. Use commas instead of
semicolons, thus:

if (eieio){eques = seven;wye = six;}

becomes

if (eieio)eques = seven,wye = six;

Both do the same thing, which is formatting your hard drive, since I overloaded the =
operator.